Hail my running brothers and sisters! Last Saturday, I had one of those days where the wheels fell off and I could barely get my act together to finish 6 miles. We all get a bad day once and awhile. That day that we can’t focus and we can barely move. Today was not that day. Today I had an awesome day! I went to the track at David Lipscomb University to knock out my 885m intervals. It was an beautiful sunny, 62 degrees, but it was a bit windy. Still, I was feeling strong. I did a mile warmup, and then worked into my intervals. I did 8 x 885m intervals with 442.5m recovery runs in between the intervals. I was jamming to my country tunes, getting my inner redneck on. Easier than you would believe for a a little brown man from the Philippines. All those years tooling around in my red, Chevy Tahoe in Tullahoma must have paid off. Anyway, my intervals went well. I felt strong working through them, but at the end, I was dead tired. After some gatorade and quick change of clothes at the office, I felt energized again. There is something about speed work that totally recharges the body and mind. I felt great pushing my body through the repeats and focusing on holding my pace kept all those negative thoughts from the other day out of my head. Like I said, I felt, and still feel, great. I’m pumped for my half-marathon on Sunday, but I’m trying to keep it in perspective. I’m approaching it as a training run for my full marathon in April, so if I can hold a 8:30 pace, I will be very happy. The ultimate goal is to finish strong, but not overly sore or injured, so I can maintain my training. Now that I’ve gotten my big workout for the week out of the way, I only have one more base mileage run left. I’ll probably rest tomorrow or do some light cross-training.
Okay now for the hard numbers: 8x885m intervals at respective times of 3:36.19, 3:40.22, 3:36.98, 3:35.88, 3:24.15, 3:32.21, 3:29.61 and 3:28.20. An average pace of 3:32/885m. Not as good as last week, but I’m glad that I’ve remained pretty consistent. Later kids!
